Not Applicable
Not Applicable
1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to methods for defining the outcome of seeded tournament games and related endeavors, either in whole or in part, and particularly with respect to methods by which wagers may be placed on tournament or xe2x80x9croundxe2x80x9d outcomes without having the winner of any particular game become fully determinative of that defined outcome, thereby to preclude the xe2x80x9cfixingxe2x80x9d of any particular game so that xe2x80x9cwinningxe2x80x9d bets could be made, i.e., within the method of the invention any xe2x80x9cfixingxe2x80x9d of the outcome is rendered virtually impossible.
2. Description of Related Art
It has been long practice for people who may or may not have any intrinsic interest in sports events nevertheless to engage in betting thereon, whether through clubs, betting parlors, or simple xe2x80x9coffice poolsxe2x80x9d or wagers with friends and neighbors and the like. Such wagering may encompass single games, or it may encompass ultimate winners in various rounds or in the entirety of various seeded tournaments, both amateur and professional, such as that of the National College Athletic Association (NCAA) in basketball (16 teams within each of four regions) or the National Football League (NFL) (6 teams in each Conference) However, a campaign further to prohibit betting or gambling in relation to both amateur (including Olympic) and professional sports is being undertaken, because of the tendency for there to occur at least two kinds of dishonest and corrupting practices in connection therewith, which are (a) the use of performance enhancing drugs; and (b) ties to organized crime and the possibility of xe2x80x9cfixingxe2x80x9d particular games so as to ensure being able to make a xe2x80x9cwinningxe2x80x9d bet. Thus, in the U.S. Congress there has appeared H.R. 3575 (106th Congress, 2nd Session), the xe2x80x9cStudent Athletic Protection Act,xe2x80x9d which would add to the existing 28 U.S.C. xc2xa7xc2xa7 3701-3704 (Title 28, Ch. 178xe2x80x94Professional And Amateur Sports Protection) a provision that would more explicitly incorporate high school, college and Olympic games within those activities with respect to which gambling would be prohibited, and also adding gambling within States that had permitted such prior to 1991. Also, the NCAA has long waged a campaign to discourage gambling by student athletes, and for that purpose it publishes a brochure entitled xe2x80x9cDon""t Bet On Itxe2x80x9d that it posts at the web site http://www.ncaa.org/gambling/dontbetonit/. It is thus of interest to devise means not previously contemplated whereby the sports wagering that will inevitably occur may be isolated from the adverse influences noted, and as background for that purpose some description of tournament structure should be useful.
For purposes of the present invention, a xe2x80x9ctournamentxe2x80x9d is defined as a sequence of two or more separate game plays between paired teams, occurring between at least two such pairs of teams, so as to yield two or more sequential outcomes that will ultimately lead to a winner of the tournament as a whole.
An xe2x80x9celimination tournamentxe2x80x9d is one in which individual teams or players that start out playing in a tournament are not allowed to proceed further in the tournament after having lost a predetermined number of games, which number is often 1, but may be 2 or more (e.g., as is often done in high school tournaments).
A xe2x80x9cnon-elimination tournament,xe2x80x9d typically employed in golf, is one in which no players or teams are eliminated from further play but simply complete the tournament, or may be projected to do so, in an order of ranking based upon comparisons of actual of anticipated scores.
An xe2x80x9ceventxe2x80x9d has the same structure as a non-elimination tournament but occurs all at once as, for example, a horse race or the like, and the horses (or dogs, etc.) are simply ranked in order of their anticipated and then actual order of finishing.
A xe2x80x9croundxe2x80x9d is one stage of an elimination tournament and is defined as an array of one or more individual games that are typically played either simultaneously or in reasonably near time proximity one to the other in the case of there being more than a single game within the round, in which the pairings of teams so playing against one another has been established by preset rules. Thus, in a xe2x80x9cfirst round,xe2x80x9d all or nearly all of the teams that will be playing in the tournament will have been xe2x80x9cpaired offxe2x80x9d in some fashion, and then those teams that win their games in that first round will xe2x80x9cadvancexe2x80x9d to the xe2x80x9csecond round.xe2x80x9d A team would not have played in that first round if it had received a xe2x80x9cbye,xe2x80x9d by which is meant that based upon some set criteria, such a team will be allowed to play in the second round of the tournament without having had to play (and win) in the first round. (Such a process is mathematically necessary when the number of teams playing in the tournament is not a power of 2, as in the National Football League in which 12 teams compete.) The xe2x80x9cfinal roundxe2x80x9d of the tournament represents the case in which the round consists of a single game, i.e., for the xe2x80x9cchampionship.xe2x80x9d
A xe2x80x9cbyexe2x80x9d is a circumstance relevant to an elimination tournament wherein some even numbers of teams or players are not required to play in a particular round, typically the first round, but proceed to a subsequent round automatically so as to join in that subsequent round with those teams or players that played in the given round and then xe2x80x9cadvancedxe2x80x9d to the subsequent round.
Both individual rounds and tournaments as a whole, and both elimination or non-elimination, are designated herein as constituting an ensemble of games (As noted, an xe2x80x9ceventxe2x80x9d is treated herein in the same manner as a non-elimination tournament.) Similar such ensembles are found, for example, in xe2x80x9cday""s games,xe2x80x9d i.e., an array of some particular number of NFL games that would be played on a Sunday, or in some instances in the course of a season there would be fewer games; in others one or more pairs of teams would instead play on some week night to complete a xe2x80x9cweek""s games,xe2x80x9d and so on, but in any event there will be some defined ensemble of games to which the method of the invention will apply in same manner as it does to a single tournament round.
By xe2x80x9cseedingxe2x80x9d is meant the process by which a set of rules has been defined whereby the performance of each of the teams within a defined league during the course of a xe2x80x9cregular season,xe2x80x9d i.e., a previously defined game schedule for the year in which all of the teams in the league participate, determines whether or not each particular team will xe2x80x9cmake the playoffs,xe2x80x9d i.e., will be permitted to participate in a xe2x80x9cpost-seasonsxe2x80x9d tournament for which there will also be defined a specific game schedule, and those teams so selected will then be xe2x80x9crankedxe2x80x9d by some set of rules. Each team that xe2x80x9cmade the playoffsxe2x80x9d is then xe2x80x9crankedxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cseededxe2x80x9d so that, in one method of seeding, the team being deemed the xe2x80x9cbestxe2x80x9d in terms of a subjective xe2x80x9clikelihood of winningxe2x80x9d becomes the first seed, i.e., with a seed of xe2x80x9c1,xe2x80x9d and the remaining teams are then seeded similarly, in ascending order, so that the lowest rated team has the highest seed number. (Seeding might also be done alphabetically, e.g., as xe2x80x9cA,xe2x80x9d xe2x80x9cB,xe2x80x9d etc., but any such method is easily converted into to an equivalent numeric scale wherein, e.g., A=1, B=2, and so on.)
That process might instead depend more objectively on the number and distribution of games actually won and lost during the regular season, or have some other basis such as a xe2x80x9cpower rating.xe2x80x9d By this latter process, which is often also subjective, teams may be rated in terms of games won and lost, and also by the xe2x80x9cpoint spreadxe2x80x9d of the games, i.e., the number of points by which a game was won, but other data may also be considered, such as who is injured, who got traded with whom, the strength or xe2x80x9ctoughnessxe2x80x9d of each team""s schedule, etc., and the seeding is then derived from that power rating.
In the case of xe2x80x9cday""s games,xe2x80x9d as another example, an array of predicted point spreads is typically published that can be used to rank the teams. This process is illustrated in the following Table I, wherein four games (involving teams with fictitious names) are shown to be scheduled for a particular day, and predictions have been made as to which teams will win and by what particular point spread or margin, and based upon those data the indicated seed numbers have been assigned:
The team for which the largest point spread win has been predicted is given the top seed of 1 and its opponent is given the lowest, i.e., 8; the team getting the second highest point spread winning prediction gets the second highest seed, i.e., 2, and its opponent gets the second lowest, i.e., 7. When using this method the sum of those two seeds for the opposing teams in a particular game always totals x+1, where x is the number of teams playing (in this case, 8).
In any event, by means of the preceding examples or by other similar means, some specific set of seeds will have been assigned, and it is to a tournament or to xe2x80x9cday""s games,xe2x80x9d xe2x80x9cweek""s gamesxe2x80x9d or the like in which seeds have been assigned, and as to tournaments the xe2x80x9cpairingsxe2x80x9d of the teams as to which team wit first play which other team and so on has been carried out, that the invention is directed. With respect to tournaments, the method of the invention can be applied to successive rounds or to the tournament as a whole, and the complete playing of that tournament will ultimately determine an overall xe2x80x9cchampion.xe2x80x9d The method does not apply to such a final tournament game, since that would entail reference to a single, particular game.
It should also be noted that different rules may be applied in establishing which team was in fact the xe2x80x9cwinner.xe2x80x9d The casual home or office better may identify that winner in the normal fashion, i.e., the winner was the team that scored the most points. More sophisticated betters may instead take account of point spreads, as noted above, wherein a team projected to xe2x80x9cwinxe2x80x9d will not actually be designated the winner unless it wins by a margin that at least equals the point spread.
To illustrate that process, we postulate a playing of the games indicated above in Table I to yield the following results: Eagles 20xe2x80x94Hawks 15; Pigeons 30xe2x80x94Sparrows 20, Crows 7xe2x80x94Robins 3; and Doves 14xe2x80x94Cardinals 13. By the common method, the winners of these games would of course be the Eagles, Pigeons, Crows and Doves. However, it may be noted that while the Eagles won their game, they did so by less than the projected point spread of 10, and consequently they would be deemed the xe2x80x9closersxe2x80x9d in the sense that those who had bet on the Hawks will have won their bet, since the Hawks lost by a score less than the point spread. Similarly, those who had bet on the Cardinals would xe2x80x9cwin,xe2x80x9d since the Cardinals lost by only 1 point, which is similarly less than the point spread (2) applicable in that bet.
While the foregoing process was described in terms of the games postulated in Table I, that same process could of course be applied to the playing of a particular round of a tournament as well. Moreover, those of ordinary skill in the art might well devise some other means other than the raw score than the aforesaid xe2x80x9cpoint spread methodxe2x80x9d by which a xe2x80x9cwinnerxe2x80x9d would be determined, and the invention must then be regarded as contemplating all such methods, the method of the invention becoming applicable at the time that some agreed-upon set of xe2x80x9cwinners,xe2x80x9d using any such method as previously agreed upon, will have been decided.
Efforts have been made to develop various schemes for evaluating or sometimes mimicking tournament play, such as that of U.S. Pat. No. 4,842,275 issued Jun. 27, 1989, to Tsatskin, which describes a method for structuring tournaments. The structure is such that, contrary to standard practice, the top- and bottom-seeded teams, and thereafter the second from the top seeded and second from the bottom seeded, etc., are in fact not paired off, thereby to make first rounds of such method more competitive. The method is also structured so as to avoid having the two best teams become paired in a first round, whereby one of them would be eliminated from further play. The teams are distributed within particular xe2x80x9czonesxe2x80x9d made up of several stage groups, subsequent play then to occur between first place finishers in the different zones. Second place finishers, and so on, are identified in a similar manner, and intermediate sub-tournaments may also be involved before there appears a final winner. The method describes an alternative procedure to that commonly in use in the playing of actual games, and does not involve any aspect of predicting winners or defining outcomes other than by the identification (through actual play) of winning teams.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,518,239 issued May 21, 1996, to Johnston, describes a method of playing a lottery game in which winning numbers are selected by the outcome of one or more sporting events such as horse races. Firstly, random numbers are generated to be assigned to individual lottery players in the usual manner. The outcome of the event is then described in terms of a set of numbers, each of which has been assigned to an entrant in the race, from which the numbers of the winning horses as in first, second, and third place finishes define the event outcome. The xe2x80x9cwinningxe2x80x9d by the lottery player is determined by the extent to which the numbers that the player was assigned match up with the numbers so generated by the event. In a variation of the actual number matching process as just described, for a multi-race event such as a three race event, the numbers corresponding to the horses that achieve first, second, and third place finishes in each event are then placed in order into a 3xc3x973 matrix, i.e., across one of the three rows for each race. xe2x80x9cWinningxe2x80x9d by the lottery player is then determined by the extent to which the numbers that person was assigned match with those winning numbers so as to form matching rows or columns in that matrix. The selection of numbers to be assigned to the lottery players is a random process as previously noted, but the winning numbers that arise from the horse race itself are established immediately upon completion of the event (taking account of appeals or disqualifications and the like), and without further calculation, i.e., the xe2x80x9cwinning numbersxe2x80x9d are established by the identity of the particular horses that achieved first, second and third place finishes in that specific order.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,779,242 issued Jul. 14, 1998, to Kaufmann, describes a format for tournament play of the xe2x80x9cdouble-eliminationxe2x80x9d type in which the winners and losers of a first round of play are moved respectively into xe2x80x9cwinnersxe2x80x9d and xe2x80x9closersxe2x80x9d brackets; the players or teams within those brackets continue their play in the usual xe2x80x9csingle-eliminationxe2x80x9d manner, some players or teams that were initially in the winners bracket being forced into the losers bracket because of a loss, the winners bracket when reduced to 16 players or teams plays a double elimination sub-tournament, and finally four players or teams of the winners bracket play a single player or team from the losers bracket in a final championship tournament.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,839,725 issued Nov. 24, 1998, to Conway, describes a game board and tournament-style game set up for 32 teams wherein seeding is done by the xe2x80x9cdrawingxe2x80x9d of up to 16 xe2x80x9cseeding chips,xe2x80x9d a remaining set of up to 16 xe2x80x9cunseededxe2x80x9d teams then being matched with the seeded teams by the rolling of ordinary die. There are also several types of die provided for use in the actual playing of the game that are so constructed as to have different probabilities of exhibiting higher numbers when rolled. These are rolled in association with corresponding seed positions so that, for example, the top seeded team will indeed tend to have a higher probability of winning. The game is played through the several rounds of the tournament, using other game implements including xe2x80x9cREFEREExe2x80x9d and other cards that impose particular steps to which a player is subjected, and thus to reflect or mimic in an entertaining manner the playing of an actual tournament. Other than the indicated seeding and xe2x80x9cweightedxe2x80x9d die processes, however, the patent does not reflect any aspect of predicting winners or defining the outcomes of the various rounds or of the tournament as a whole other than that normally used in the play of actual tournaments.
Finally, in U.S. Pat. No. 6,092,806 issued Jul. 25, 2000, to Follis, an NCAA basketball tournament prediction game is described that includes (a) a contestant entry form, (b) a scoring system with 100 points available overall to be xe2x80x9cearnedxe2x80x9d by game contestants; (c) data processing means for determining contestant game scores; and (d) means for notification of results to contestants. In the tournament there are 64 teams, resulting in a total of 62 game pairings plus the final championship game, and contestants in the described prediction game are then to pick the winners of those 63 individual games. A disadvantage of this prediction gamexe2x80x94which, of course, is easily adaptable to betting purposesxe2x80x94lies in the usual process of xe2x80x9cpicking the winnerxe2x80x9d of individual games, which process may come to encompass the adverse influences previously described.
Again with respect to the present invention, in the case of the NCAA, for example, within a particular region the team with the xe2x80x9cbestxe2x80x9d record for the regular season would be ranked or seeded as xe2x80x9cNo. 1,xe2x80x9d and the team with the xe2x80x9cworstxe2x80x9d record would be seeded xe2x80x9cNo. 16.xe2x80x9d There being four different regions in the NCAA basketball tournament, the total number of teams becomes 64. FIG. 1 shows an instance of the manner of seeding with respect to two such regions that herein are arbitrarily defined respectively as NW and SW regions, it being assumed that there would be a similar pair of NE and SE regions that would ultimately yield an overall winner that would xe2x80x9cface offxe2x80x9d against the winner from the indicated NW and SW pair of regions for the final championship. Using such a tournament structure, it has been the practice in both home and office betting, and in more sophisticated gambling environs, to bet on the outcomes of particular games which, as noted above, can have deleterious results on the objective nature of the sport. It would be useful, therefore, to provide a method both of defining xe2x80x9cwinnersxe2x80x9d of such a betting practice that would be isolated from the winning of particular games, and also by way of a numerical randomization process to separate entirely the issue of winning games from any kind of betting practice, and it is such a method that comprises the present invention.
The invention provides a method for defining the complete result of the full play of a sports tournament, or of any particular xe2x80x9croundxe2x80x9d of such a sequential tournament, or similarly in a grouping of xe2x80x9cday""s gamesxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cweek""s games and the like, in terms of a single digital number. That number is derived by a summation, within such a round or grouping, of the seed numbers of the teams that in fact won their games. Since the number so derived is established by the entirety of play within the tournament or within a particular round or grouping, there is no single game that can be determinative of that number. Consequently, unlawful, manipulation of the outcome of any single game, or of any number of games less than the full totality of games played within a round or grouping, would be fruitless as a means for seeking to ensure the placement of any winning bet. The link between tournament play and any kind of unlawful gambling, or the xe2x80x9cfixingxe2x80x9d of games so as to ensure having a winning bet, is thus essentially severed. The invention also provides a numerical randomization process through which any small vestige of a connection between betting and the winning of particular games can be eliminated entirely.